Intel preps dual-core Pentium for imminent release

Just yesterday news "leaked" out that AMD plans to launch its dual-core …

Hours after I posted my previous article on AMD's April 21st dual-core Opteron launch, word hit the newswires that Intel is already shipping its dual-core Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (a.k.a. Smithfield) processors to vendors like Dell. Intel claims that these chips, which will be priced initially for the workstation market and the higher end of the consumer segment, will be available in the retail channel "imminently." Dell has plans to make available workstations based on the chips "in the coming weeks."

Judging from some quotes attributed to Intel in this Computerworld article (i.e. this line: Talwalkar downplayed the possibility that AMD could beat Intel to market with a dual-core chip, saying that being first was not important. "This is not a race," he said.), I expect that AMD will still technically beat Intel to market, whatever that means, by a few days. But it's going to be close, and the Intel dual-core parts will have a lower price and be more readily available to consumers.

I don't look for many people to pick these dual-core machines up initially, given that the software industry is still in the midst of switching gears to take advantage of multicore computing. One of the dual-core Pentiums may yet bring Intel back to the God Box (which will be updated real soon now) before long, but we'll have to wait and see what the real benchmark numbers look like.